Giselle Salazar-Tapia (GoFundMe) and the dock where her body was found (KTRK screenshot)
Law enforcement authorities in Texas are investigating the death of a 30-year-old mother of four whose body was found late last month partially submerged in water and “hanging off a dock” under circumstances that have led police to believe she was killed and the scene was staged to look like a suicide.
The victim has since been identified as Giselle Salazar-Tapia.
According to a news release from the League City Police Department, officers at about 1:48 p.m. on May 31 responded to a call at a marina in the 700 block of Davis Road regarding “a woman who was hanging off a dock.” Multiple callers told the emergency dispatcher that the woman “appeared to have been lifeless as she hung by a rope from the dock,” police wrote.
Police and emergency medical personnel with the League City Fire Department responded to the location where they located the victim. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police initially disclosed few details about Salazar-Tapia’s death, other than to say they spoke with her friends and family as well as a “distraught” boyfriend who was staying on a boat in the area.
“Officers and detectives conducting the death investigation began speaking with the victim’s friends and residents in the area,” the release states. “A man who was possibly the victim’s boyfriend, became very distraught and would not come out of his boat. After a short time, officers were able to talk the man safely off the boat.”
But after more than a week of investigating, police confirmed that the evidence at the scene indicated that Salazar-Tapia was killed somewhere else before being brought to the marina and hung from the dock.
“In this particular case, what’s suspicious is the positioning of one of the victim’s arms being in an upright position with nothing holding it up,” LCPD Officer Jose Ortega said in an interview with Galveston newspaper The Daily News. “Detectives believe the victim passed away in another location with her arm raised.”
Lt. Eric Cox of the department’s criminal investigation division offered a similar explanation to Houston ABC affiliate KTRK.
“Her arm was found suspended up in the air, and there was nothing holding it there,” he told the station. “So, we believe she probably passed away with her arm extended up above her head like that, and then rigor mortis had set in prior to her being placed like that,” Cox said.
Cox also told the station that police had two persons of interest in the case as of this week.
“They’re people that we know she probably had the closest interaction with while she was living out there, so they have both been interviewed,” he said.
KTRK also identified the boyfriend as 30-year-old James Hart, whose boat has reportedly been at the Marina where Salazar-Tapia’s body was found since March 2024. Hart spoke to the station about what happened the last night he saw the victim.
He said they were both staying on the boat for the night when Salazar-Tapia got up sometime after midnight and, he thought, went to the bathroom. When she didn’t return, he assumed she had “gone for a few days” and went back to bed. It wasn’t until police contacted him the following afternoon that he learned she was dead, Hart said.
“I would never hurt Giselle,” he told the station.
Hart also reportedly said that he typically has two surveillance cameras on the boat but one disappeared before Salazar-Tapia’s death and the other appeared to have been turned by hand to face away from his vessel.
Cox noted that officers had been called to Hart’s boat several times in the past for disputes that involved Salazar-Tapia.
The victim’s family agreed with police regarding the manner of Salazar-Tapia’s death, telling the station that she would never have taken her own life.
“I just want everyone to know my sister didn’t do this to herself. She didn’t commit suicide,” sister Esperanza Alegria told KTRK. “We just want justice for her. We want whoever is responsible, who did this to my sister, we want them to get charged for what they did to her.”
A GoFundMe to help the family pay for her funeral and memorial can be found here. Her family said the proceeds would all go toward giving her a “proper send off” with the remainder going to her three young children.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
